The Rising
by Gary MF Oak
Summary: I've always liked to imagine the world of Pokemon in a little more color than my Gameboy could provide. What follows is my attempt to create a darker, younger, more realistic Pokemon. Pre-Ash by a 30 years or so.
1. Chapter 1

The cold gnawed at Tom Marl's cheeks and nose. Even with a heavy woolen overcoat buttoned over his uniform, his jaw was clenched, muscles tight, in defiance of the night air. Clad all in black, he was a shadow amongst the shadows cast by the tall buildings of Lavender City. Out in the open air of the city's main street, a full moon smiled down and tall streetlamps glowed merrily, such that a traveler in the night could walk alone with ease, but Marl did not walk the main street tonight, he was not a traveler, and he was not alone.

The towering halls of the university were made of the pale bricks that gave the city its name, and in this part of town they were so numerous as to create a winding network of alleyways between them. Marl walked in silence. His soft leather boots were well worn, and passed over the uneven cobblestone street with a level of stealth and assurance bought by many such passages. Lavender was a sea town, and the roads had been laid with ballast brought here in the bellies of ships. Even when Marl had been a child, the streets had been old, and they were chatty old hags. The stones always called out what they saw: the many pattering of soft-soled nurses walking home from a late shift at the hospital; the weary but urgent tit-tit-tit of a small man's shoes as he walked home from the office, thinking only of his dinner – cold, wrapped and waiting; the clop-clop-clop of a man who wanted the world to know of his passing, looking for trouble. Marl heard these sounds and more.

Stopping at the dark mouth of the alley he was walking, he looked out at the street that ran like a river of light through the heart of the city, and waited. Behind him the stones spoke of no one's passage, but Marl knew better. Letting his right hand, numb in the cold, drop to his side and open slightly, he felt the dog glide silently under his hand and stop at a heel. Wuthrad, his eyes and ears. His strong right arm. His partner.

The growlith's burnt orange coat was slashed with black, but Marl knew that in the dark of the alley he was invisible. Wuthrad's head bore a shock of thick tan fur styled in a mohawk of sorts that Marl buried his frozen fingers in. The warmth of the dog seeped through his leather gloves and into his bones. The man's jaw unclenched in relief. No words passed between the partners as they watched the road. Silently, Marl glanced at his left hand to check his watch. The hands glowed out at him. 2:26 AM.

The tip had been anonymous, but specific.

Under his hand, the muscles that ran along the dog's skull danced and grew tense. He stood nearly three feet at the shoulder, and was his volumous tan tail not dipped low in stealth, he might have stretched four feet from its tip to his nose; enormous for his breed. Ears perked, Wuthrad's head turned to gaze westward down the street. The man followed suit. He had long learned to trust the animal's senses over his own.

Soon the man detected the cause of the dog's angst. A motor's guttural groan as it pushed up the hill that lay under Mauve Street. The groan grew louder as the vehicle neared, and by the time Marl could see the large truck itself, it was a cacophony in contrast to the muted tones of the night. Hard rubber tires squeaked against the smooth cobblestones as the truck came to a halt on the far side of the street, just opposite Marl's alley, and from its passenger door stepped a man clad in an overcoat with a collar so tall it covered his ears. A tweed newsboy's hat was pulled down low over his eyes, so that he appeared to be more clothes than man. Wuthrad edged forward slightly as the man turned his back to the partners and made to open the back of the truck.

"Wait," Marl breathed.

The man had half his body in the back of the truck, fiddling with something that clinked gently, metallically. Marl watched, transfixed. Wuthrad backed up, fidgeting angrily. Marl felt the muscles under the dog's fur move to pull back its lips and bare powerful jaws made razors by a row of gleaming teeth. The heat rising from the animal was growing fiercer, such that Marl's hand was becoming uncomfortable on its head.

"Wait," Marl said again, still watching the man. _What is he doing? What's taking so long? He's exposed in the street._ This didn't feel like a robbery, or even the precursor to one. It felt wrong.

Finally pulling himself from the back of the truck, the man stood holding what looked to be a bouquet of flowers. Lavender and some white pedaled things. Perplexed, Marl watched as the man strode calmly over to the stoop of a nearby residence, one of the more affluent in the city, and placed the flowers gently down at the foot of the door, with a card or tag of some sort laid out on top of them. He whistled as he made his way back to the truck's driver seat, passing out of view behind the vehicle. Now Marl tensed. _Then where's the driver?_

Wuthrad growled a mean growl, hot and deep and full of anger. Marl smelled the smoke that curled from his maw well before he could have seen it. Backing away from Marl, the growlithe growled again, crouched low with his shoulders arched and wooly head on a swivel. The truck pulled away, and behind it stood a tall man in black. Something flashed in the man's hand, and Marl's felt the bullet tear through his side and out of his back before he heard the shot.

Marl felt an intense heat wash over the right side of his body such that he had to close his eyes. When Wuthrad wanted to be quiet, he was a cloud moving through the sky. When the dog wanted to be loud, when he loosed the great fire he kept down inside of himself; he was the roar of a bonfire in the ears of an ant. Fire and fury.

Slumped against the wall of the alley, his blood painting the pale bricks dark, Marl watch the man be consumed by Wuthrad's anger. The jet of flame caught him in the chest, breaking on him like water on a rock. The torrent of flame pouring from between the dog's fangs was white hot and turned ten different shades of red before it exploded onto the man in a plume of orange and yellow – his screams where high and terrible.

"No!" Marl rasped wetly, blood in his mouth and lungs. "Enough!" From the corner of his right eye he saw something dark coming at them fast. A half-second later a ball of purple black wings slammed in to Wuthrad's side, the fire-dog's flamethrower twisting and then ceasing as he was knocked bodily against the opposite wall of the alley as Marl. The zubat bit the dog, his fangs sinking deeply into a furry orange shoulder. Wuthrad roared in pain and surprise. Something exploded on the building across the street. Windows shattered. Marl looked back down the alley they had come by to see two more men sprinting towards him and the dog.

Hands fumbling and numb, he wrenched at his hip for his sidearm, giving the bat on Wuthrad the best kick he could muster in the process. Ripping the black revolver from its holster, he dropped one of the men unthinkingly. It was an easy shot at fifteen yards. _So why am I not dead?_

Squeezing off shots wildly, the second man took a round to the shoulder at close range and dropped the pistol he was carrying, but managed to kick Marl's gun from his hand a moment later. Standing over a wounded Marl, it was an easy thing to crack the prone man across the face. The man was big, and his fists were hard with callouses. Marl's head whipped to the side with the impact of the blow. Heat and pain shot up his leg.

Jerking his head back to his foe, he saw the man transfixed in pain, his arms stretched out above his head. The bat was gone, and Wuthrad's fangs were sunk deep in the meat of his calf, holding it in place while the dog cooked it with a spout of bright flame. It washed around the blackening flesh and had caught Marl's leg aflame as well. Rising as quickly as his wounds would allow, adrenalin slamming through his veins, Marl let loose a hook that took the screaming man on the sweet of his jaw, crushing the bone underneath and ending the man's wailing.

Wuthrad released the unconscious and badly burnt assailant, and went to sniff at the one dead by Marl's revolver. Coughing up blood as he patted out his smoldering trouser leg, burnt to the knee, Marl stooped to pick up his revolver, which strewn out in the street. Lights were coming on up and down Mauve. Sirens began to wail in the distance. _How long had it been since the flower truck left? 60 seconds?_ Across the street the burnt man wheezed and struggled to pull air into his scorched lungs.

"Wuthrad, here." He called into the alley. The big dog trotted out. Tail up. Ears perked. The burnt man's eyes locked on Marl's, and a ridiculous smile split across his hideously charred face. It stayed there until Wuthrad wrapped his jaws gingerly around the man's throat, eyes on Marl for the command.

"You're out of your league, cop." The man breathed, trying not to move. Wuthrad growled lowly as smoke began to wisp from the corners of his lips. The man whimpered pitifully, and the acrid smell of urine filled Marl's nostrils.

"I'd lay quite now, if I were you," Officer Marl said, holstering his pistol. Police cars were arriving on the scene. Men in dark uniforms were exploding from their cars. One shouted orders. Walking over to the flowers on the stoop, pristine and lily white under the moon and streetlights, Marl could see the dark lettering on the small, cream colored envelope plainly.

"You're Invited!"


	2. Chapter 2

Gerrand Blackhand

Gerrand had risen before the sun, and gone to fetch Urdana. He took with him the painted, earthen great-jar, black as pitch and emblazoned with the sigil of his master's house. Though it weighed nearly 40 pounds unfilled, he carried it with ease to the water and would carry it back to the high-walled home of Doro Blackthorn without difficulty. He had grown in accordance to the whims of his office. Where a banker's son might develop a keen mind for figures and a tailor's daughter might grow to have fingers deft and quick, so had he inherited the thick arms and bullish shoulders of a water-bearer.

The roads in his master's town were humble and thin. Lit by lantern in the pre-dawn and unpaved, the meager path weaved between the earthen houses, the few shops and the small market that comprised Blackthorn proper. Gerrand knew from his few outings in the service of his master that were he in the household of some great man in Goldenrod, or any of the cities in the west, he might have taken an automobile to the riverside this morning, or more likely a bicycle. In truth, his position as water-bearer would not exist in any city but this, he reflected as he washed alone in the clear, quick water. The great-jar watched him imperiously from the shore through the serpentine eyes on its silver sigil.

Of course, a man in an automobile would not be able to climb the tall stairway cut in to the mountain that lead from the river back to his master's town. Nor would a man on a bicycle be able to carry the heavy great-jar through the uneven streets of Blackthorn without overturning his load. Gerrand felt the many muscles in his back give an involuntary shudder as the cold water rose to his shoulders, each bearing a deep brand – the mark of his master's house. A man carrying the great-jar by bicycle would have many more such markings.

Gerrand submerged completely, letting the river pull through his long black hair. The current was strong. If he let it, the river would carry him all the way to through the mountains that surrounded his quiet town and to the sea, so far away. Lifting his head back above the surface, he walked back towards the shore, where the great-jar waited like an impatient father watching his child at play. "Back to work, now," it seemed to say. He had dawdled enough.

The mist was still hovering over the river, though he knew it would be burnt away by the sun soon. Taking the heavy black jar by one of the thick handles that curved down from its gaping mouth, he carried it bodily to the water to drink. This was the river Urdana. She flowed silver and black from the ice caps that surrounded Blackthorn like a jagged crown, and its water was sacred to the town and its master. Each pulse of the river added ten pounds to the load Gerrand bore, but when the jar was full he pulled it from the water as lightly as he had lowered it. His arms and back, legs and neck, all bulged and bore the weight evenly as he lifted the great-jar with one hand under its tapered bottom and the other wrapped around its handle.

A woman stood at the foot of the great stone stair that weaved up the mountain pass to Blackthorn. Gerrand had seen her before. Upon her hip she bore a jar of white ceramics, glazed smooth as ivory. Her skin, tan and strong, stood out in contrast. The moon over fresh tilled earth. Duty had crafted each sinew of her body in the same fashion as his, and as he grew near her he reached out his eyes for hers. Deep pools of liquid amber in warm sand. The road to the river was narrow. When she passed, he knew he would be able to smell the lavender that she washed in nightly. Standing to one side of the rocky path, little more than a game trail, he made way for her passage.

"Thank you, Gerrand Blackhand. A good day to you and your master." She said as she passed. Gerrand's eyes were downcast as she walked by, but he turned to watch her go. The woman's hair was woven in to a long braid of thick black silk that hung well past her hard buttocks and swung like the pendulum on some grand old clock of dark wood. He knew it had taken three serving girls as many hours to twist so much hair in to one single strand of onyx, and he appreciated every second of their labor.

"And to you, Laranna Fangfoot. May the violets in your master's garden forgive your beauty and bloom on." He called back to her in a calm voice, though the electricity of his boldness was running through him. Her only answer was a smile tossed furtively over one shoulder, and a shake of her lustrous head.

There were several such servants who carried water back and forth from the river to their houses. All bore their natural first names, and the beginnings of their master's surnames. The latter portion of the noble name became hand, or foot; arm or ear, to designate that the man or woman bearing the name was an extension of the noble house. It was not unheard of for a servant to leave his or her master's service, for whatever reason, and upon such a time a new surname was usually chosen. Many servants, however, chose to stay in the household they were born in to, especially if they had the fortune of being born into a house so great a Doro Blackthorn's, whose wings stretched the valley-wide. Such was the way of the village.

Cresting the highest ridge of the mountain stair, he beheld Blackthorn below. Each building in the town, regardless of its owner's station, was built of a dark sturdy brick, and roofed with a sheeny green ceramic. Tendrils of smoke rose from many of the chimneys as morning meals were prepared. A man led a miltank drawing a rickety cart of milk from door to door. A serving girl of six or seven years walked to empty a chamber pot, her arms outstretched to keep the smell from her nose. It was a warm place. A good place.

At the head of all of this sat the house of Doro Blackthorn. On its island in the middle of The Tranquil Lake it was the pupil of a great blue eye. Its expansive grounds and far reaching, red tiled roof were surrounded by thick brick walls. A pair of towering timber doors, painted black, stood in the center of the wall facing the village. Gerrand's long road home would take him over the stone bridge that reached across the lake. When at last he reached those tall doors, the great silver sigil glaring down from the black wood, he would enter the house of his master, and pour the Urdana into the mosaic central pool, as he did every morning.

Behind his master's house rose Mount Urdon. The Black Fort, men called it. Beyond that Gerrand Blackhand couldn't say what there was. The sun rising over the water-bearer's shoulder cast itself in a faded violet on the Urdon's rough-cut head, such that it looked like a great bloom of lavender. Thinking of Laranna, her black braid heavy in the water, her thin cotton dress hiked up around her thighs – guarded against the cold water, he turned back to call to her.

Beneath, at the end of the long rocky stair, the serving woman's pretty ivory jar sat alone by the river, an old woman. From this distance it looked like a pearl, sharp and glittering, on a necklace that was the dark blue Urdana. Gerrand strained keen eyes at the jar, the river, and the jagged shore, where smooth river stones met hard rocks cast from the path above. He looked on and again.

Laranna Fangfoot was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

The man in black had begun with the perimeter guards. Stalking through the dense, old growth forest that surrounded Mercutio's Viridian estate, it was child's play to move between their lumbering and predictable patrol routes. He wasn't a killer by trade as much as he was a commander, a visionary, but he was not without skill, and what ability he had was bolstered by his implacable hunger – his devouring greed.

With his back pressed flat against the rough skin of a tree, he listened to the footsteps of a guard grow louder. The cone of light that burned out from the guard's flashlight cast the man in black in an inky shadow behind his tree that grew ever darker as the light got closer. He knew that, alongside the light, the guard carried a communication radio and a pistol. The weapon would be unsilenced.

The estate was deep in the forest, far from any town or ear not on the payroll. Over the sounds of the footsteps, the ambient hum of the forest was deafening in the heavy summer air. The buzzing and chattering of a thousand, thousand insects; the squeaks and cries of the animals that made their life in the hot, dark underbrush. Perhaps it was the call of a noctowl, long and deep, that made the guard turn his light away from his route to look out into the depth of the wood. It was all too easy for the man in black to step from behind the tree and run the thin knife he carried on his hip over the guard's throat, holding his other hand over the man's gaping mouth to muffle the short scream. Something warm and wet was ran over his fingers in torrents.

As he was easing the guard down to slump against a great pine, the communicator on the dead man's shoulder crackled.

"Mertauge. Vinnette. Report. What was that on the southern line?" barked an older man's voice from the radio. Annoyance flickered over the face of the man in black. He eyed the dead guard in the thin silvery light that filtered through the canopy. He knew this man. Calpa was his name. He was some distance relative of Mercutio, maybe a nephew or the friend of a nephew.

"Just some spearows making a night of it," the communicator answered in a younger man's voice, "Nothing you would know about, sir Captain, sir." The man in black hear the sharp laughter of two young men, maybe 50 yards away. Leaving Calpa against the pine, he made his way towards them. As, he moved, a shadow deep in the wood followed him.

Mertauge and Vinnette had their lights off. Sharing a cigarette, they leaned against a tree that had been bent and warped by a lightning bolt a century ago. At their feet, an ekans lay coiled. The bright red eyes of the snake burned through the night alongside the red smolder of the men's cigarette. The man in black's brow furrowed. _What else don't I know?_

He had expected Captain Paulo, Mercutio's grizzled and constant bodyguard that kept a golbat and an ugly raticate; Vinnette, Mercutio's sister's step-son, who had not been able to make an impression on any pokemon; and Calpa, whose zubat had been badly injured and run off weeks ago; but he did not know this Mertauge or his snake.

He could not leave them be. It was too risky. Behind the men glowed the estate of Mercutio. It was a gaudy and towering thing of red brick. A fortress in the wood that could have housed dozens comfortably, but kept only one. _So far as I know._ From cover, the man in black gave the windows of the mansion a hard look. The lights were on in every one.

Ahead, the men were laughing again, calling back the man in black's attention. Sweat beaded on his brow. The tip of the cigarette flared as one of the men gave it a drag, dipped with his arm, then floated to the other man's hand and glowed bright again, but the red eyes of the ekans were gone. The man in black eased himself back behind his tree.

He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He listened. The forest roared in the silence. To hear the smooth belly of the snake pulling over the pine-needled ground would be impossible. To his right, some 30 yards in to the forest a ruby glowed warmly in the dark for an instant just on the periphery of his vision. _She knows where he's at._ His heart was slamming in his chest. To overwhelm the snake was doable. In an open contest, it would have had no chance. But this was not an open contest. The struggle would call the guards, and their captain follow. Not to mention, he didn't know anything about this ekans, except what all things being hunted know, their hearts pounding in their chests as they lie in some borrow: it knows where I am.

Pulling the silenced pistol from the dark leather holster he wore under his arm, the man in black edged around the pine to see the two guards tossing their cigarette. Lifting his pistoled he squeezed off two shots, liquid smooth and whisper quiet. Both found their marks in the skulls of the men on guard. Something moved in the pine straw to his right, but before the snake had time to move on the man in black, Serana had her claws deep in its back.

The big persian sunk her canines into the back of the snake's neck, just behind the skull, and held it to the ground noiselessly. The red jewel set in to the cat's forehead was cold and dark, but her eyes were all muted fury in the faint light of the moon and mansion. The snake was five feet long at least, and as wide as a strong man's arm. Seconds ago it had been moving noiselessly over the needles, tracking his heartbeat, now it was struggling weakly in the vice of Serana's jaws.

Walking over to the dead men, and leaving Serana to her task, the man in black pulled the two bodies against the tree they had been smoking under. The communicator on their shoulders belched out the captains gruff voice in unison, "Keep laughing, boys. I'll have Francine gnaw off your fingers while you're sleeping."

Behind him, the man in black heard the distinct sound of skin and flesh being ripped off in strips. Turning, he eyed the cat wearily. Her tan fur looked a dark grey in the night, and her teeth glinted wetly. While her claws and teeth were at work on the snake, her eyes were locked on his. As long as he had worked with Serana, he knew not to come near her while she was eating.

"Good work, my pet," he said lowly as he eyed Mercutio's grand estate. "Save room for more." Paulo was out there somewhere, and he would not be taken off guard so easily.


	4. Chapter 4

Dorolance Blackthorn

From beneath a stand of high mountain firs in the shadow of Mount Urdon, Dorolance Blackthorn combed the length the valley below. His hard blue eyes rapt, looking for the tiny dots that meant prey. The black leathers he wore were supple and adorned with silver buckles that glowed in the pre-dawn. Bear fur, sable and thick, poked out from his wrists and neck. Emblazoned across his chest was the glaring silver dragon of his house, and from over his shoulder glared a silver dragon.

Dara. The dragonair's long serpentine body stretched through the firs, in some places coiling around the trees. Her length was near the height of three men, and when the thick muscles of her tail wrapped around the firs, even in repose, the proud trees looked like twigs ready to be snapped for kindling. But then, dragons were never at repose, truly.

The old dragoness' head was adorned more richly than a queen's, and her deep violet eyes were locked on the valley floor, searching well past the range of the boy. A great, silver blue orb glinted at her throat, more opaque and yet more lustrous than the finest gemstone and larger than a strong man's fist. The horn that sat on her forehead was worn ivory, the point dulled by the ages, but harder than bone and without blemish. Where a fox might have ears, or a bull might have horns, Dara had wings, each a foot tall and of a silver so fine it made the precious metal clasps on Dorolance's hunting doublet look like crude iron. They were folded back against the dragon's metallic head now, but the boy knew that when he gave the command, they would spring up in a flourish more extravagant than the fan-dancers his mother kept – their tall silver-wrought fans twirling in great arcs in a poor facsimile of the dragon's splendor in flight.

Winter had descended formally a full month ago, but the mountains surrounding Blackthorn were indifferent in their white magnitude. When the low lands coated themselves in the white of snow the servants of his father's house would call it beautiful. His sister would set up an easel and paint them walking with their wool-clad children through powder that came up to their waists. But to Dorolance the fields and byways under the mountain looked like a harlot, cheap and gaunt, wrapped in the snowy finery of a lady far outside her station. When spring came the snows would melt away and all that would be left was muck over every day toil and unremarkable routine. The sun would burn away the façade, and the low lands surrounding his father's village would be left naked and filthy; the servant's children would wallow and fight in the mud.

Dorolance preferred the mountains, and it was here that he came with Dara to hunt and train. Six inches over his right shoulder, the dragon's lips drew back to show the front most row of her silver-steel teeth. Hot breath steamed from the small nostrils at the end of her blunt snout and plumed out in front of Dorolance's face to form a glittering cloud in the sharp morning air.

"Where?" the boy asked the great serpent, his face craning up to see where the dragon looked. Dara's eyes where a violet storm, as beautiful and clear as they were terrifying and violent. Her gaze was fixed at the base of the valley, where the evergreen forest of the lower climbs was at its greatest reach and met the gushing Urdana. From this height, the trees below looked like green feathered blades of grass and the mighty river looked like a black thread, but Dara saw what he could not. Dorolance reached to pull a collapsible telescope from one of the leather purses that hung from his hip. Scoping through the silver tube, he eyed the trees where Dara was glaring.

Still several yards in to the lush of the forest below, something was moving. The boy couldn't quite make it out, but it was making for the river. Through the multiple lenses of the telescope the trees had grown from blades of grass to chess pieces, the branches at their spiked heights were white with snow. Even through the scope they looked miniature, but Dorolance knew each was older than his father's palace and wider around than two men could reach, wider even than the thick band of Dara's musclebound body. The dragon let out a hiss, long and low, and the boy could hear the trees her tail was wrapped around groaning and cracking under the steel of her grip.

"Dara. Wait." Dorolance said in a deadpan tone, dropping his hand to rest on the smooth scales of the beast's throat. He was taking a risk touching her while she was in this state, but Dara was an old dragon and had known his touch and that of his father and his father before him. The sensation of the dragon's vocal chords rumbling under his gloved fingers was soothing. Dorolance's serious face broke in to an uncharacteristic smile as he watched the source of Dara's ire step from the old firs; an Ursaring.

As old and gnarled as the mountain forest itself, the great bear lumbered from the trees on all fours, pausing to stand on its wooly pillar legs to survey the valley. From his vantage point, the bear looked no bigger than a dog, but that was just an illusion of the looking glass. Dorolance knew that the bear stood no less than eight feet tall, and that its paws where as big as his chest. Each of the bear's five claws was as long as his slender hands and half as thick. This one, in particular, was a monster of a bear. Its roar was an open challenge to any in the valley. The shaggy depths of its dark fur broke in to splashes of tan on its face, and Dorolance had caught glimpse of the signature ring of light fur on its broad belly when it stood.

It would take ten men with long spears to subdue a bear of this size, and some of them would not come home from the hunt. Dorolance had seen such a thing only once as a child. The man that struck the beast first, a strong hunter from a line of strong hunters, had his arm taken off at the shoulder by a single stroke of the beast's paw. For what was a man to a bear? Just a bag of guts bound up by a bit of muscle and skin?

The ursaring was at the river now, trying to drink the black rush dry with great laps of its pink tongue. Dorolance lowered the scope from his eye, and raised his right hand from the dragon's throat in a fist. The dragon squirmed in her great scaly skin, the length of her body pulsing with power and anticipation and her violet eyes flaring hatefully on the bear below.

"Hai, Dara! Kill!" the boy shouted ferociously, dropping his fist. No sooner had the "K" in the command to kill passed from his lips had the dragon erupted from the high mountain firs, ripping the bark of those unfortunate enough to be held in her coiled grasp. She dip not soar through the air like a fearow, riding the thermals that climbed up the rocky mountain walls, nor did the dragon saw through the air like a zubat. When Dara flew it was as it all the world were an ocean, men where lobsters crawling upon its sandy floor, and she were a great water serpent, moving through the air as swiftly as a trout in the Urdana's roiling black.

She came down on the bear like a thunderbolt, covering the several hundred yards that separated the river from their mountain perch in seconds. Her battle scream was a high pitched grate that made the ursaring look up sharply just in time to catch a long fountain of purple flame full in the face. Dorolance watched Dara swim over the roaring bear, now engulphed in flame, and double back on it in a graceful flourish of silver scales. The ursaring swung its blade-claws wildly through the air in great arcs as menacing as they were empty. Just the same, those claws where made for murder and could rend through dragon scales near as easy as a man's skin.

Dara floated impossibly some six feet off of the ground near the flailing bear, probing for an opening in the wall of claws that was rapidly approaching her. She could simply evade the monster in the air, and cook it from the air, but Dorolance knew better. Swinging the end of her silver-steel tail like a flail, she smashed the two canalope-sized pearls at its tip against the bear's iron hip. Even from a distance as great as this, Dorolance could hear the impact, like a cannonball smashing in to the oaken hull of a warship.

The bear twisted grotesquely to the side, its pelvic bone and left leg clearly shattered. It was all over now, the boy thought as his lips turned up in a grin of satisfaction. How many winters had this bear reigned in the thick fir forest the clawed up the mountain? How many stantler had it ripped through like wet tissue? Was this perhaps the king of bears on this mountain? The chief and grandest of their number? Dara circle behind the struggling bear, deaf to its anguish as it tried to follow her on its ruined lower half. A gout of purple flame roasted the bear's flank, searing off what fur remained. The broken and charred monstrosity that remained was a roaring nightmare. Its cries were high and shrill, the regal roar of its entrance forgotten forever.

In the end it didn't much matter how old or storied the ursaring had been. What wonderful, terrible battles it might have fought in the great forest. If it was the best of its race. For what was a bear to a dragon? Only a bag of guts bound up by a bit of muscle and fur.

Dara came in on the hulk with her gleaming fangs, locking her jaws down overtop the ursaring's neck and shaking her steel body with force enough to rip trees from the earth. The bear was an inanimate boulder of muscle, shaken now as a rope is shaken by a dog at play.

When the dragon began to feed, Dorolance produced a silver whistle from his purse, and blew at it with the full strength of his lungs. The noise, to him, was a whisper, but Dara looked up as if he had shouted down thunder on her hidden ears. Two more whistle blasts told her to bring the kill, and wrapping it in her steel grip, the long silver dragon pulled the limp, blackened bear through the air towards Dorolance's fir lookout. She set the steaming mess down at his feet and coiled her body like a snake, waiting on his approval.

"Lo, Dara. A good kill." The boy said, looking up at the dragon's flawless head with its eyes young and old: young in their fervor and old in their knowing, endless depth. From another purse on his belt, Dorolance tossed the beast a rolled packet of meat and herbs, specially attuned to Dara. The dragon snatched it easily from the air, and purred lowly with vocal chords made of fire. The boy strode to the kill, taking from his hip a long silver dagger with a handle of blackened bone.

It took him near an hour to dress the kill, taking breaks to break his and Dara's fast on the choicest of the meat, the thick bands of muscles that ran along either side of the bear's spine. He was bundling the ursaring's shoulders and flanks in a buckskin when his father's greathorn cut the air in the village so far below them.

The boy and the dragon's head shot up in the same sharp motion. Silence followed. _One blast._ Another blast charged the air. _Two blasts_ , the boy thought, his blood rising. Behind him, Dara squirmed with the anticipation of a kill. Dorolance stood and walked from the meat, its fatty opulence forgotten.

"Whoa, Dara. Easy." He breathed, raising his hands to calm the beast, which had risen up to its full towering height, trying to see the village over the fir ridge they had flown to. When the third blast of his father's horn reached his ear's it was drowned out in the same instant by Dara's schreeching cry. Her violet eyes were wild with excitement, purple flame whispered out from between her silver smooth maw. The dragon lowered herself to the ground so quickly that Dorolance had to hop to one side to avoid being caught underneath her. Dara barked at him impatiently.

Leaping on the dragon's waiting back, Dorolance locked his ankles against the steel of Dara's sides and slapped her scaly back, "Go, _saranna_! Go, sister!" He called to the beast, and just as soon they were soaring over the fir ridge, leaving the ruin of the bear and the mountains behind and sliding through the sky. Far below, smoke rose from the village of Blackthorn and with it the sound of bells.


End file.
